Golden Knights Chief Marketing Officer Brian Killingsworth (left) and Chief Sales Officer Jim Frevola used to work for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and now they're reunited in Las Vegas with the Golden Knights.

Former Tampa Bay Bucs Sales and Marketing Duo Reunited in Top Business Jobs with Golden Knights

When Golden Knights Chief Sales Officer Jim Frevola heard the hockey team’s chief marketing officer was leaving the first-year franchise in early July, Frevola fired off a text to his old business mate back at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Frevola told pal Brian Killingsworth — at the time, the NFL Bucs chief marketing officer — that the Golden Knights had an opening for their CMO position after Nehme Abouzeid resigned and started his own consulting firm.

Later that day, Golden Knights President Kerry Bubolz was on the phone with Killingsworth and it turned out that Killingsworth was the man for the job.

Frevola, 48, and Killingsworth, 40 — the former chief sales and chief marketing tandem at the Buccaneers — were reunited in Las Vegas in July and now serve as the team’s most pivotal business executives under Bubolz, the team president.

Frevola and Killingsworth worked together in Tampa for the NFL team in 2015 and 2016, and that history of working together as a well-oiled business duo was crucial in Las Vegas because the Golden Knights had a mere three months to launch their inaugural season in October after Killingsworth came on board in July.

Golden Knights Chief Marketing Officer Brian Killingsworth (left) and Chief Sales Officer Jim Frevola are reunited in Las Vegas after working together for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2015 and 2016.

It’s Killingsworth’s job to come up with and execute fun and creative marketing and promotion ideas, while Frevola is charged with taking those concepts and selling them to companies and sponsors for six- and seven-figure deals.

“It helps to look across the table and say one sentence to Brian . . . ,” Frevola said.

Frevola, a 1992 University of Miami graduate, has history in Las Vegas. He worked for UFC as vice president of marketing partnerships from 2011-14, and enjoyed living in Las Vegas. When Bubolz offered him the chief sales job with the Golden Knights, he jumped on it.

Meanwhile, Killingsworth, a Tampa native with a Flagler College communications degree in 2000 and a University of South Florida MBA in 2002, worked in senior marketing positions at the Tampa Bay Rays, St. Louis Rams and Tampa Bay Bucs.

They both live in Summerlin and their wives are friends, too.

A good example of the Killingsworth-Frevola duo’s work in Tampa with the Bucs was when Killingsworth and Frevola worked together on a virtual reality headset for potential corporate partners to see their logos superimposed in an upscale 240-seat club room where seats were selling for $7,500 each.

In Las Vegas, Killingsworth and Frevola — along with Bubolz — teamed up in a funny video that involved Bubolz asking the duo to suggest celebrities to sound the team’s new powerful goal horn that cost in the upper five figures.

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Alan Snel

Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com.
Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle.
In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com.
After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent.
Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.

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